Loving Myself Is Hard

Processing.

Ok, I need to read the benefits stuff that the people sent me for the interview.  It’s a 2 1/2 hour interview.  What the hell?  I have never had an interview that long, but apparently I have to meet like eleventy billion people in the process. 

I’m having a rough time with this.  The Pinata and I have a seriously dysfunctional relationship, a work-spouse relationship where I do a lot of the shit a wife does, and take a lot of the crap his wife won’t.  Nothing at all sexual, but there’s a lot of emotional shit going on, on several levels.  My former therapist told me that when I described my work environment as “like an abusive relationship” that it wasn’t entirely accurate, it IS an abusive relationship.  It goes through cycles where I’m his savior, it’s him and me against the world, everything he is is because of me, blah blah blah, and then it starts to ramp up into everything is my fault, to the point where I get yelled at because he didn’t put an appointment *I* didn’t know about in HIS phone. 

I don’t have access to his phone. 

I’m not exagerating when I post the “crying at my desk” posts.  I cry at my desk a lot.  He’s figured out where a lot of my buttons are and he pokes them with regularity. I come home and cry on StabbingContest and take clonazepam or have a drink or a beer nearly every night. 

And yet, much as with an abusive relationship, I feel like I’m abandoning him.  Like because I’ve let him get away with this shit for so long that the emotional abuse I put up with is MY FAULT. 

Let me repeat:  I HAVE CRIED AT MY DESK NEARLY EVERY DAY FOR THE PAST SIX MONTHS AND PART OF ME THINKS IT’S MY OWN DAMN FAULT.

How fucked up am I?

And sometimes he can be very sweet, and charming.  He buys me little presents when he goes overseas.  He calls up to have me meet him in the coffee shop downstairs (because he can’t be assed to remember what I drink, although I can tell you exactly what he drinks, double tall Americano, no room, twist if they have it).  He’s incredibly charming if you don’t know him well. 

One of the other admins says if I leave I owe them bagels at least once a month for putting up with his ass after I’m gone. 

And he does fucked up shit all the fucking time.  Asking me to get him coffee or tea because “I’m so busy right now” but those “busy” times always coincide with the visit of someone he’s trying to impress, usually from overseas.  He wants to know why things aren’t done when I can’t sit down and finish a single solitary task without him yelling from his office or calling me on the phone to interupt about 900 times a fucking day. 

Seriously, my supervisor used to give me shit about what did and didn’t get done.  So I tracked my day on an excel spreadsheet, including how much of my time he wasted calling me into his office to stand around and do jack shit while he kept me waiting, asking me to come in and look at pictures of teeth, asking me to come in and sit there and let him vent, talk him down, explain what is and is not politic in west coast academia, why you can’t say certain things and why you need to be nicer to your students. 

She suddenly quit doing it, and even removed some of my workload after that because of what a full time job holding his hand was. 

So, why do I feel sad at the thought of leaving?  Not just leaving, but leaving him?

I feel like a complete fucking idiot, and I’m reasonably sure none of you are still reading this crap.

I need to go read the benefits package so I can ask some meaningful questions about them and figure out if I can live with them, or if I keep looking and/or hope for another department at the university. 

StabbingContest just came in and when I asked him why I would feel sad about leaving, he said, “Stockholm Syndrome.”

• 21 August 2012
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